The world cup trophy is still on tour, i saw it in Brazil in April but it can when to Uganda i wasn’t there. Just last week the papers had a picture of the president holding the cup but thats not my interest. K’naan, a Somali- Canadian singer and poet has the Coca Cola world cup song out
He’s life story is told in some of his songs but i love this gimme freedom part for the very first World Cup on the African soil.
The song is a remix from his earlier song Waving flag which has got very strong lyrics for most of us in Africa below is part of the lyrics that have a great meaning for me :
Born to a throne, stronger than Rome
but Violent prone, poor people zone,
But it’s my home, all I have known,
Where I got grown, streets we would roam.
But out of the darkness, I came the farthest,
Among the hardest survival.
Learn from these streets, it can be bleak,
Except no defeat, surrender retreat
So many wars, settling scores,
Bringing us promises, leaving us poor,
I heard them say, love is the way,
Love is the answer, that’s what they say,
But look how they treat us, Make us believers,
We fight their battles, then they deceive us,
Try to control us, they couldn’t hold us,
Cause we just move forward like Buffalo Soldiers.
But we struggling, fighting to eat,
And we wondering, when we’ll be free
So we patiently wait, for that faithful day,
It’s not far away, but for now we say,
[Chorus]
When I get older, I will be stronger,
They’ll call me freedom, just like a Waving Flag,
And then it goes back, and then it goes back,
And then it goes back
That’s the power of music and a friend of mine responded after listening:
“I am glad that for the first time the world will listen to someone Somali and that new face we haven’t seen. All we have been hearing is about the bombs ”
As K’naan takes that stage around on the world cup tour I say Coca Cola made the right pick. He will remind us that Somalia is about people like him and that we should “accept no defeat, surrender, retreat.”
Rosebell Kagumire 